Hun­dreds of peo­ple have fled their homes af­ter crim­i­nal gangs be­gan fight­ing with each oth­er over the last week­end, al­so forc­ing the clo­sure of hos­pi­tals in the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince.

The group, Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders (MSF), said hun­dreds of res­i­dents sought refuge in its hos­pi­tal in the neigh­bour­hood and that one of its se­cu­ri­ty guards had been shot by a stray bul­let while in­side the com­pound.

“We man­aged to evac­u­ate him, and his con­di­tion is now sta­ble,” said Davina Hayles, MSF’s head of mis­sion in Haiti. “But it is un­think­able that our teams and civil­ians should be­come vic­tims of these clash­es”.

MSF said it had tak­en in more than 800 peo­ple who sought refuge, but as the sit­u­a­tion wors­ened, it de­cid­ed to sus­pend op­er­a­tions at the hos­pi­tal un­til fur­ther no­tice.

In a state­ment over the last week­end, Hait­ian rum mak­er Bar­ban­court and two of the na­tion’s largest bot­tlers warned about de­te­ri­o­rat­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions near Port-au-Prince’s Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, where op­er­a­tions are now se­vere­ly re­strict­ed.

They said that the gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the cri­sis has been “large­ly in­suf­fi­cient,” and not­ed that the poor state of the roads lead­ing to the air­port makes it dif­fi­cult for Hait­ian se­cu­ri­ty forces to pa­trol the area.

“You can­not se­cure an air­port if you al­low the roads around it to de­grade,” said the state­ment.

The in­crease in fight­ing comes even as the Unit­ed Na­tions-backed Gang Sup­pres­sion Force (GSF) mem­bers are be­ing de­ployed in the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries.

The force of about 5,500 mem­bers is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly in place by Au­gust, but lack of funds and al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse have stalled the op­er­a­tions so far.

The UN has re­port­ed that an es­ti­mat­ed 4,400 peo­ple have been forced to leave their homes since the start of this month and that many of them are in makeshift camps or in the homes of friends or fam­i­ly.

Gangs have sought to over­throw the gov­ern­ment since the as­sas­si­na­tion on Ju­ly 7, 2021, of then-pres­i­dent Jovenell Moi­se..

Last week, a court in the Unit­ed States con­vict­ed four men on charges of plot­ting to kill Moïse by hir­ing mer­ce­nar­ies to as­sas­si­nate him at his Port-au-Prince home.

Moïse was shot 12 times with a bul­let to his heart, de­liv­er­ing the fa­tal blow, ac­cord­ing to Jean Armel De­mor­cy, Haiti’s on­ly foren­sic pathol­o­gist, who tes­ti­fied on be­half of pros­e­cu­tors. Moïse’s wife, Mar­tine, was wound­ed dur­ing the at­tack and flown to the US for treat­ment.

All four men face life in prison. At least five oth­ers have plead­ed guilty to the con­spir­a­cy and are serv­ing life sen­tences.

CMC/ah/ir/2026

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 12, CMC